Why do lizards lose their tail?

There was a lizard inside our house on the sliding screen door.

We tried to take it outside, but we also tried to pet it, and it ran in mom's hair. It got tangled. This isn't the real picture, it's a reinactment.

Mom and I went outside. Mom went to the playhouse. I tried to get it out of my mom's hair. The lizard was very excited/scared. I got the lizard free and it fell. Its tail fell off when it hit the ground.

The lizard ran away. I got the tail, it was wiggling so much!

Lizards lose their tail to escape predators. The wiggling tail distracts the predator. Lizards can their tail back, it is called regeneration. Axolotles can regrow a a lot of stuff, their gills, legs, and arms, and even their heart, but just part of it, not the whole heart, because if you take their whole heart away, they would die.

Talking To Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell's book contains many good stories, but is rather misnamed, as many of the examples he provides are not about talking to strangers, but misreading people. As a psychiatrist, I often wonder if someone is being truthful or not, particularly when evaluating drug use and suicidal and violent intentions. It was comforting to realize that this is a hard task, and that some people are indeed mismatched, and that experts in interrogation can get it wrong, and also disconcerting. We are taught that suicide is difficult to predict, and that is true. There are lists of risk factors, the primary one being a history of suicide is most likely to predict future suicide. The software algorithm that predicted whether an accused person would show up to their hearing made sense to me, that focusing on risk factors without meeting the person had a better predictive rate than the judge.

Overall, I think there are situations where it pays to be a bit more skeptical than the default truth mode that he doesn't adequately introduce, and I don't think he drew many convincing conclusions. For instance, I agree that drinking too much will make judging other's intentions hard, but I don't think he talked about necessary cultural changes enough, though he mentioned the native tribe that with culture, had people drinking to excess with no issues. The victim of Brock Turner was right, alcohol did not rape her. Gladwell is right that it did make her more vulnerable, but there were many drunk people who didn't rape anyone that night, and I don't think he emphasized this enough.

Le Tote Review - is the dry cleaning process toxic?

I recently tried Le Tote and was super excited about my first box, however, I began to wonder how the clothing was dry cleaned, as the site says:


A little about our cleaning process:

- All clothing items are thoroughly washed, steamed, and checked over twice by our Quality Assurance team before being packed and shipped.

- We use hypoallergenic, unscented detergent on all garments

I can tell you, the clothes have a scent, a pleasant scent, but they are not unscented.  Also, it says on the site that some items are dry cleaned.

Cleaning

All Products will be professionally cleaned and delivered ready to wear for each consumer. We tumble wash and / or dry clean and inspect each product with the utmost care, but use of the product is at your own risk and Le Tote, Inc. shall not be held liable for any health-related complaints associated with a product rented from our site.

This concerned me, because dry cleaning can be bad for the environment, and there is a common agent called tetrachloroethylene, PERC, which may cause miscarriage. Le Tote offers maternity rentals, it is unknown if the amount of the chemical left on clothing is significant, however, I asked the company about this on the phone, by email, on twitter, and on facebook, and only got this reply:

Thanks for reaching out! Your membership fee includes complimentary dry cleaning and steaming of all garments and sterilization of all accessories. All items then go through our Quality Assurance department.

After being checked in, all garments are sorted by their fabric weight and washed according to specific classifications to ensure thorough cleaning without damaging the item.

Once they are washed and dried, clothing items are steamed before being quality checked and re-shelved.

We launder all items with EcoLab detergent. EcoLab detergent is hypoallergenic and cleans without using hazardous chemicals while saving industrial laundry customers as much as 3 million gallons of water a year! After being checked in, all garments are sorted by their fabric weight and washed according to specific classifications to ensure thorough cleaning without damaging the item.

Okay...so, how do you dry clean them? I never got an answer, but it was easy to cancel my subscription and get a refund for my one and only box.